Volume CXXXI, Number 24 May 3, 2002 f

Not always the best of both worlds
GENEVIVE CREEDON
COLUMNIST

I was four months old when I moved to the United States. My first words were in French, to my mother's delight and my father's horror. The tables turned, though, several times, until my family landed in a town that was home to a French American school, a town where the compromise of national identity was to be found.

People I encounter never fail to remark how wonderful it is that I am fluent in two languages and have studied two others to varying degrees. The "I wish I could have done that" comments perpetuate, and while I see the great advantages of being schooled in a bilingual and bicultural system, there are conflicts that arise as well.

In the school I attended for the better part of my education, the French staff members almost always had an issue with the English side, to say nothing of the Spanish, German and Latin components. Students were rarely aware of the tensions. The school always wanted to believe the utopian vision that a bicultural system really gives a student the best of all worlds.

I would agree in most cases, except perhaps in the realm of cultural identity. At the school, the few of us who were permanent residents or had been in the U.S. for more than six years were considered to be the Americans. We were the stabilizers of the school, unlikely to be sent with our families to Taiwan on two weeks' notice. The French teachers playfully referred to us as the "Anglophones." We were distinct.

Outside that environment, in soccer leagues and even at the local public high school, I was known as the kid who came from the French school. Quite suddenly, I was no longer American. I was thrown instead into the "say something in French" world that drove me crazy.

For one, I have never considered myself to be French. If anything, I am a French Canadian, except that when I go to Canada people wonder how my mother, who speaks with a good Canadian accent, can have a daughter who is so "French." In fact, I'm not a particular fan of the Canadian accent, and I don't spend much time in Canada, maybe a month out of the year for skiing.

The result of an "international community" is, for immigrants, often a stronger sense of culture and cultural identity. I don't consider myself to be an immigrant, but at the same time, Americans won't call me American. When they learn that I speak French, they suddenly detect a slight accent that I can only hope is imagined.

It becomes of paramount importance to find a place where one's culture or cultures are not continually linked to actions and words. Part of an education certainly is learning that in some contexts a person does not want to be inextricably linked to his or her heritage. Ask me what I am, and I'm inclined to just call myself a mutt at this point. For me, the designation works. For others, it may not.

In response to my non-committal attitude toward cultural or national identity, I have often been told that it can "be a problem," and that I have to decide on my national allegiance sooner or later. I suppose it can be a problem if it leads to rootlessness, but can we not find roots that are not planted in such subjective entities as nation and history?